Berkeley City Council Doing Its Anti-Democracy Bit

[DanaC]

Contrary to what you may believe tw, Sundae isn't here as the cite police. It's not double standards, it's just an organically evolving thread in which something somebody said sparked her interest.

[Radar]

Cite? You mean other than Indonesia, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Eastern bloc nations (Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania, etc. ) Venezuela, nearly every African nation, etc.?

[Radar]

Originally Posted by tw

You are asking the wrong person for citation. TheMercenary has made rediculous claims that require citation. Although I don't agree with some of Radar's conclusions, at least he is willing to put forth supporting facts.

A more accurate question for Radar would better define a boundary between socialism and communism. At what point does a socialist nation differ from a communist? For that matter, the US also could be called a socialist nation. All depends upon where boundary numbers get applied.

France is considered by many to be a socialist nation. The French (what - five years ago?) rose to the top of the list - the world's most productive nation. Others who have been there include Norway. Are they socialist? Some say so.

So where is this numeric definition that defines a difference between a socialist and a communist nation? And where is this citation from TheMercenary for any of his posts? Oh. TheMercenary can post something without citations? Well, Sundae Girl, why the double standard?

Socialism and Communism are just different spots on the same scale. The more a nation embraces socialism, the worse off they will be. European socialist nations like England, France & Germany support socialism in some form, and they suffer in those areas. Germany is still having a lot of trouble because of their socialism and some would claim they are successful. Some people actually claim Sweden is a successful nation. I don't call any nation where the government keeps over half of what you earn to be a successful one.

I consider America to be a partly socialist nation in that it has government programs that steal from those who work and create wealth, the government keeps a huge portion of it, and then gives what's left to those who are too lazy, inept, or incapable of earning their own way. It's false charity and it does more harm than good.

When a nation openly nationalizes the means of production you're talking about communism or full socialism.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by tw

You are asking the wrong person for citation. TheMercenary has made rediculous claims that require citation. Although I don't agree with some of Radar's conclusions, at least he is willing to put forth supporting facts.

A more accurate question for Radar would better define a boundary between socialism and communism. At what point does a socialist nation differ from a communist? For that matter, the US also could be called a socialist nation. All depends upon where boundary numbers get applied.

France is considered by many to be a socialist nation. The French (what - five years ago?) rose to the top of the list - the world's most productive nation. Others who have been there include Norway. Are they socialist? Some say so.

So where is this numeric definition that defines a difference between a socialist and a communist nation? And where is this citation from TheMercenary for any of his posts? Oh. TheMercenary can post something without citations? Well, Sundae Girl, why the double standard?

Yea, you and cite your ramblings all the time. Even when they are incorrect. Carry on.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Radar

so I'll just add you to my ignore list and from now on I can avoid hearing your mind numbing stupidity.

There is a God!

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by tw

You are asking the wrong person for citation. TheMercenary has made rediculous claims that require citation. Although I don't agree with some of Radar's conclusions, at least he is willing to put forth supporting facts.

A more accurate question for Radar would better define a boundary between socialism and communism. At what point does a socialist nation differ from a communist? For that matter, the US also could be called a socialist nation. All depends upon where boundary numbers get applied.

France is considered by many to be a socialist nation. The French (what - five years ago?) rose to the top of the list - the world's most productive nation. Others who have been there include Norway. Are they socialist? Some say so.

So where is this numeric definition that defines a difference between a socialist and a communist nation? And where is this citation from TheMercenary for any of his posts? Oh. TheMercenary can post something without citations? Well, Sundae Girl, why the double standard?

Ok big boy which of these are socialist which are communist, which are other? Radar is an idiot because he stated that 80% of the third world is either communist or socialist. That is false.

This article lists forms of government and political systems, according to a series of different ways of categorising them. The systems listed are of course not mutually exclusive, and often have overlapping definitions (for example autocracy, authoritarianism, despotism, totalitarianism, monarchism and tyranny).


Alphabetical list with hierarchy
The following list groups major political systems (recognized by political science) in alphabetical order. The various subtype political systems are listed below the main system of government.

Anarchism
Anarcho-communism
Anarcho-capitalism
Anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-socialism
Anarcho-syndicalism
Eco-anarchism
Isocracy
Mobocracy
Tribalism
Authoritarianism (Autocracy or Oligarchy)
Absolutism
Enlightened absolutism
Aristocracy
Communist state
Corporatism
Despotism
Diarchy
Dictatorship
Military dictatorship
Benevolent dictatorship
Gerontocracy
Hagiarchy
Kakistocracy
Kleptocracy
Matriarchy
Meritocracy
Monarchy
Absolute monarchy
Constitutional monarchy
Feudalism
Despotate
Duchy
Grand Duchy
Elective monarchy
Emirate
Hereditary monarchy
Popular monarchy
Principality
New Monarchs
Self-proclaimed monarchy
Viceroyalty
Patriarchy
Patrimonalism
Plutocracy
Timocracy
Police state
Corporate police state
Puppet state
Robocracy (fictional)
Theocracy
Caliphate
Halachic state
Holy See
Islamic republic
Sultanate
Totalitarianism
Fascism
Tyranny
Technocracy (bureaucratic)
Democracy
Deliberative democracy
Democratic republic
Democratic socialism
Direct democracy
Participatory democracy
Representative democracy
Parliamentary system
Westminster system
Consensus government
Presidential system (Congressional system)
Semi-presidential system
Republicanism (Republic)
Presidential republic
Parliamentary republic
Constitutional republic
Totalitarian democracy

By approach to regional autonomy
This list focuses on differing approaches that political systems take to the distribution of sovereignty, and the autonomy of regions within the state.

Sovereignty located exclusively at the centre
Empire
Unitary state
Sovereignty located at the centre and in peripheral areas
Federation and Federal republic

By political franchise
This list shows a division based on differences in political franchise (suffrage).

anarchy - rule by no one
autocracy - rule by one
oligarchy - rule by minority
republic - rule by law
democracy - rule by majority
socialism - rule by all

According to Weber's tripartite classification of authority
Max Weber in his tripartite classification of authority distinguished three ideal types of political leadership, domination and authority:

charismatic domination (familial and religious)
traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonalism, feudalism)
legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy)

[TheMercenary]

Here is a better link.

Some have elements of many forms of government, including socialist and or communist ideology. Few are one or the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._of_government

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Radar

The phrase "Common defense" is repeated twice; once in the preamble describing one of the purposes of creating the Constitution and another in Article 1, section 8 when describing the limited powers of Congress. The phrase "Common Defense" defines and limits the role and scope of our military as being solely for the defense of America and for nothing else. It limits the war making powers of congress to being solely for the defense of America.

I thought you'd try this one. But you run aground on the question of what the common defense truly is. Who, being an American and having business in foreign parts, would exclude American business interests from inclusion under the common defense rubric regardless of where those American business interests are? American interest has always been more or less global and globalized. In practice there is no definable endpoint to where the common defense of Americans and of American interests lies. This is particularly true in nations where property rights are not secure from official cupidity -- and these nations are numerous. They do not secure property rights well, which leaves it to our government's protective function to cover for our nationals, on the assumption somebody has to or the economy goes to pot and everyone's poor, because no one can do business if his gains are euchred from him. In the fourteenth century, this happened to the Chinese iron smelting industry -- it was wiped out inside of ten years and it never returned. It took the laissez-faire of Europe to make a success, and a general prosperity, of large scale efficient smelters.

Your approach is only workable in the absence of any other nation over the entire Earth -- and for that matter, the complete absence of foreigners, as well. Is this even clinically sane? The vehemence with which you adhere to this suggests intense xenophobia -- your whole "screw the rest of the planet, they don't get to be free or wealthy as far as I'm concerned -- if I'm concerned at all" attitude, that is. One can scour your posts for any interface with other lands, languages, or cultures, and come up with -- zero. Strategically, this is unconscionable, and that calls for reading between your lines, to diagnose what's behind the screen of words. What I'm seeing isn't pretty.

The clauses containing the term common defense do not limit the role and scope of our military -- as the whole, every last syllable, of historical precedent demonstrates. You pointedly avoid acknowledging this reality. What does that say about you? I say you worship the golden calf of bullheadedness. Fortunately, I do not.

They are a gross misuse of the military and anyone who orders or takes part in such actions is guilty of treason.

A bullheaded eccentric who yells "Treason! Traitor!" at every second opportunity is guilty of ranting each time he does so, and can make no defense -- not even a Constitutional one, particularly if you actually are a strict constructionist, at which point you have to confine your definition of treason to the Constitution's: if I haven't made war upon the United States, I am innocent of treason; if I haven't given aid and comfort to America's enemies, I'm innocent of treason. Since I cannot be sanely imagined to have done either, you do the math. You rant, and your narcissistic personality makes you thoroughly unfit to do politics -- it keeps you from exercising judgement. Really, by your reasoning, every government employee anywhere at any time who ever formed or executed policy from 1776 onwards is "guilty of treason." Hard to credit, putting it mildly.

[Undertoad]

One can scour your posts for any interface with other lands, languages, or cultures, and come up with -- zero.

Radar has a wife of a different land, language and culture, and a child by that wife.

He's posted about her often for many years.

That's your level of reading comprehension when you "scour". You should hear yourself after you "skim".

[Radar]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

I thought you'd try this one. But you run aground on the question of what the common defense truly is. Who, being an American and having business in foreign parts, would exclude American business interests from inclusion under the common defense rubric regardless of where those American business interests are? American interest has always been more or less global and globalized. In practice there is no definable endpoint to where the common defense of Americans and of American interests lies. This is particularly true in nations where property rights are not secure from official cupidity -- and these nations are numerous. They do not secure property rights well, which leaves it to our government's protective function to cover for our nationals, on the assumption somebody has to or the economy goes to pot and everyone's poor, because no one can do business if his gains are euchred from him. In the fourteenth century, this happened to the Chinese iron smelting industry -- it was wiped out inside of ten years and it never returned. It took the laissez-faire of Europe to make a success, and a general prosperity, of large scale efficient smelters.

Your approach is only workable in the absence of any other nation over the entire Earth -- and for that matter, the complete absence of foreigners, as well. Is this even clinically sane? The vehemence with which you adhere to this suggests intense xenophobia -- your whole "screw the rest of the planet, they don't get to be free or wealthy as far as I'm concerned -- if I'm concerned at all" attitude, that is. One can scour your posts for any interface with other lands, languages, or cultures, and come up with -- zero. Strategically, this is unconscionable, and that calls for reading between your lines, to diagnose what's behind the screen of words. What I'm seeing isn't pretty.

The clauses containing the term common defense do not limit the role and scope of our military -- as the whole, every last syllable, of historical precedent demonstrates. You pointedly avoid acknowledging this reality. What does that say about you? I say you worship the golden calf of bullheadedness. Fortunately, I do not.



A bullheaded eccentric who yells "Treason! Traitor!" at every second opportunity is guilty of ranting each time he does so, and can make no defense -- not even a Constitutional one, particularly if you actually are a strict constructionist, at which point you have to confine your definition of treason to the Constitution's: if I haven't made war upon the United States, I am innocent of treason; if I haven't given aid and comfort to America's enemies, I'm innocent of treason. Since I cannot be sanely imagined to have done either, you do the math. You rant, and your narcissistic personality makes you thoroughly unfit to do politics -- it keeps you from exercising judgement. Really, by your reasoning, every government employee anywhere at any time who ever formed or executed policy from 1776 onwards is "guilty of treason." Hard to credit, putting it mildly.

Common defense doesn't mean defending American "interests". It means defending America. No more, no less. The American military is also not here to defend the economy. The furthest America was to go in defending American interests was to defend our ships from pirates. When you choose to do business in other nations, you are gambling. You are taking the chance that you will be able to do business without having your business stolen from you. If they are stolen from you, the American government isn't here to protect your poor investment choices.

My approach works with a planet full of nations and is not isolationist or xenophobic in the slightest. It welcomes trade and friendship with all nations and keeps us from entering into alliances that require the use of our military. These are the same principles that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, etc. shared.

The phrase "common defense" defines and limits the role and scope of our military to being solely for the defense of America...not America's foreign interests, not the American economy, etc. The truly insane are those who think it has any other legitimate use.

I've traveled the world many times over while serving in the Navy and since then. I speak 4 languages. I have a better understanding of global trade and of the opinion others hold of America than you are likely to ever have.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Radar

I consider America to be a partly socialist nation in that it has government programs that steal from those who work and create wealth, the government keeps a huge portion of it, and then gives what's left to those who are too lazy, inept, or incapable of earning their own way. It's false charity and it does more harm than good.

I don't think I'll be seriously pursuing the claim that most 3rd world countries are socialist/ communist. We have a different understanding of the words.

[Radar]

Any time the government takes money from those who have earned it by force or coercion (fear of going to jail) and gives it to those who have not earned it .... it's a textbook example of socialism.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Really, UT? Then why the weird quality of radar's posts? Why his absence of a global libertarian vision? Why his reluctance for us to help remove political obstacles (almost the only kind that seem to have effect) to engendering prosperity worldwide? He ought to remember that prosperity is good for business, and that the business of America is business. His noncomprehension of the value of liberation from the oppressions of too much government, whenever foreign peoples are concerned, strikes me as, well, thoroughly bad. Too much government equals not enough business and not enough wealth or wellbeing. It is hardly unlibertarian to liberate those ground under tyranny's heel, and thus I consider it our responsibility as human beings. Radar definitely won't take this responsibility, leaving him vulnerable to accusations of inhumanity. I don't get hit with these any too often. Which of us, then, is the friendlier to the global body politic?

It does not follow that because he married foreign he's thought foreign policy through. He seems to me not merely uninterested, but actively against thinking about it -- have you noticed his insistence that America retreat within its own borders, becoming this continental cloister? It's all over his writing -- any excuse whatsoever to withdraw from the world, he makes it. There must be a reason for such consistency, and I don't think we can lay this one directly at narcissism's door.

That's never been how these United States have functioned, not long-term, and especially so once we became a world power around the turn of the twentieth century. Sure, many other nations put together don't spend but a fraction on the military we do -- they can afford to do that precisely because of what we spend on it, and what we get for that expenditure is power projection like nobody else can manage. What's more, a century of experience with us has shown us trustworthy; the good actors among nations don't need to arm up against the United States, and this fact is reflected in the size of their military establishments, particularly in their navies, which by comparison with the US Navy look more like the Coast Guard, and have similarly coastal missions and areas of operation.

American interests I believe are not separable from America in general, nor separable from the economy, for the reason that we're too interconnected with the rest of the world.

You will have to show proof, proof mind you, that the "common defense" clauses are limiting clauses. So far, you've only repeated your assertions, not proven them. I do not recall a "common or territorial defense only" anywhere in there, and I say you couldn't find one. I read them as: this is one purpose. It is tacit about others, but does not forbid them. The Constitution doesn't set forth how foreign policy will be conducted, it merely apportions who does what parts of the whole. Except in matters of funding, that is the Executive Branch. It takes the Legislative to ratify foreign aid.

I think, radar, that you're more interested in being radical than in getting it right, or practicing "the art of the possible." You look to an eccentric reading of the Constitution in an effort to pare down the size and scope of the Federal level of government, but I don't think the Constitution supports you in the endeavor -- you're trying to have trade without security, and that is unwise. Better, I think, to concentrate on paring down the Federal welfare-state departments.

I've been around the world with the Navy; I've crossed the longitude of Diego Garcia going both east and west. I've been close to war. I speak four languages myself, English, Spanish, French, and Russian, and can still order lunch in Turkish, and am looking into taking some German. Don't try getting haughty with me.

[Radar]

Libertarians are against the initiation of force against those who pose no threat to you. Those who are being oppressed do have a right to take up arms against those oppressing them. You do not, unless they have hired you as an agent. You also do not have the authority or right to use the U.S. Military to carry out your so-called "liberation".

Who are you to decide who is or isn't oppressed? Who are you to decide what kind of freedom others will have? You are nobody. You are nothing, but a war-mongering loser who hates libertarian principles. And yes, you are far more inhuman than I will ever be accused of being.

The U.S. Military has one and only one role. To provide a common defense for AMERICA. It's not to police the world. It's not to fill in security gaps. It's not to act as a peace keeper between other nations. It's not to enforce UN sanctions. It's not to practice nation building or humanitarian aid. It's not to "liberate" oppressed people. It's not to overthrow or to prop up leaders in other nations. It's not here to defend foreign interests of American investors. It's not here to protect the American economy. It's not here to secure sources of oil. It's not here to prevent other nations from developing nukes or other weapons. It's not here to start unprovoked wars. It's not here to do any kind of "pre-emptive" attacks.

Defense means defending against an attack. Not against a possible attack by someone who might have a weapon some time in the future and who doesn't like us.

The stated purpose for our military is to provide a common DEFENSE for America. The 10th amendment limits the federal government from doing anything that isn't specifically enumerated (listed) in the Constitution. Using the military for non-defensive purposes is not listed. END OF STORY. You lose. Get over it.

You claim to speak English, but you can't seem to read it. You're virtually retarded. My reading of the Constitution isn't eccentric. It's in the exact context that the founders wrote it. If that seems eccentric to you, it's because you have no comprehension of the fact that it was written to limit the government. The founders didn't want us in a constant state of war or to act as the world's police or to liberate others. They wanted us to be the champion of our own freedom and the well-wisher of freedom to others.

The Constitution most certainly does say that the role and purpose of the military is to provide a common defense for America. It limits this role through the 10th amendment. Congress is given the limited ability to make war if and only if it is in the defense of America which means we were attacked first. The president has absolutely zero war making powers and is NOT the commander in chief until called upon to serve as such through a formal declaration of war. He has no legitimate authority to send a single soldier into battle for a single day.

You support wholesale murder in the name of your "vision" of freedom. You think it is up to you, or to the United States to determine how other governments will treat their citizens, or what kind of government they will have, as though democracy were the best form of government. You are no different than any other petty tyrant who tries to justify the use of force. I already know you are a in inhumane scumbag. Just don't pretend to be a libertarian. You aren't fit to stand in the shadow of a real libertarian.

Each and every single time you lie about the federal government having powers that are non-enumerated, I'll set you straight. Every time you try to support an unconstitutional use of the military to carry out illegal actions, I'll set you straight.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Radar has a wife of a different land, language and culture, and a child by that wife.

He's posted about her often for many years.

That's your level of reading comprehension when you "scour". You should hear yourself after you "skim".

That explains everything, she is probably an illegal alien living here an breaking our laws. Figures. Makes perfect sense.